One suspects the talking heads who blasted Wright will pretty much ignore Terry’s remarks because, well, he’s white and “one of us, y’ all”. But, if there is any question about whether or not Santorum supports such hateful rhetoric, check out this video of Santorum’s policies in action. On Friday he and his staff had Timothy Tross and Ben Clifford thrown out of a rally in Arlington Heights, Illinois. Their crime? The two men took Romans 16:16 literally and decided to greet each other with a holy kiss…..

(Kiss comes in at about 2:03…)

When asked whether the kiss was a public display of affection or merely a symbolic act, Tross and Clifford of Algonquin declined to comment.

“I don’t think the message should be about what my sexuality is,” Tross tells the Palatine Patch. “It’s the message that he’s [Santorum] saying about sexuality that matters.”

A handful of human rights supporters placed themselves among more than thirteen hundred conservative Rick Santorum fans in Boise Tuesday night to send the message that the GOP candidate’s views are too extreme, even for a conservative state like Idaho.

Holding an Add the Words, Idaho banner and other signs, the dozen or so were quickly spotted by Santorum supporters.

A Sign drawing attention to the 14th amendment

“You are in the wrong crowd,” one Santorum fan told them. “We are conservatives, not radicals.”

Add the Words, Idaho organizer Lisa Perry politely retorted, “I’m not a radical. I believe in equal protection as given to us by the constitution.”

Santorum’s speech itself was obviously crafted to tickle the social conservative’s ear, but was otherwise unremarkable.

“Frothy Mix’ repeated much of the same lies and claims he has made throughout his campaign including the President’s supposed war on religion, “The President has said he can force Catholics to hire women priests,” he told the crowd.

Santorum seems to have a fact checking problem. The fact is the President has never made any such claim, in fact, the administration’s stance on the issue has the exact opposite. As Think Progress reports,”The Obama Administration’s brief in the case Santorum cites expressly stated that it would be unconstitutional to tell the Catholic church to do so, a fact that Santorum would have been aware of if he had actually bothered to read the Supreme Court’s opinion in Hosanna-Tabor.” (Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. E.E.O.C.)

He also repeated the disproved, though popular, claim that only fifty percent of all American’s pay taxes. The truth is, “according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center in Washington, D.C., 46% of tax filers will owe no federal income tax this year. But when you figure in payroll taxes — such as those for Social Security, Medicare and unemployment — more than 80% of tax filers pay some kind of federal tax. And that doesn’t include sales taxes, state taxes, local taxes, gas taxes, etc., which catch just about everyone,” reports the USA Today.

Santorum drew big applause when he talked about things like breaking up the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, border control and his belief that global warming is due to a “political climate,” but he offered the crowd in Boise little if nothing new.

Following the speech, equality supporters gathered at the back of the auditorium and held their signs as the crowd exited.

Perry says she feels the decision to be at the event was a good one. She says several people asked the group what “Add the Words” meant. “We were able to educate a new group of people about job and housing discrimination. In doing so, we gained several new supporters tonight, so it was totally worth it,” says Perry.

Christopher

Equality supporters are planning similar actions for both Ron Paul’s visit in Twin Falls on Thursday morning and Mitt Romney’s visit to Boise on Friday.

Paul will speak Thursday morning at Roper Auditorium in Twin Falls. The event starts at 11:30 am. Doors will open at 10:45. Romney will be speaking at Guerdon Enterprises, a modular building manufacturer in Southeast Boise, at 1:30 pm Friday. Both events are free and open to the public.

According to Think Progress,”Occupy Wall Street protesters nearly drowned out Rick Santorum for 44 minutes as he tried to deliver remarks at the Washington State History Museum in Tacoma, Washington on Monday night. Speaking from a balcony, Santorum sought to condemn the state’s newly enacted same-sex marriage law and the Ninth Circuit’s ruling against Proposition 8, but was repeatedly interrupted by protesters yelling, “we are the 99 percent.”

Looking all the part of a scary political dictator, Santorum told the protesters to “go out and get a job,” he then described the protesters as a “radical element” that represents “true intolerance.

According to a Facebook event page, Santorum will be making an appearance in the Capitol High School Auditorium, 8055 Goddard Road in Boise on Tuesday night, February 14th from 7:00-8:00 pm.

“Please come to Capitol High School (address above), prepared with signs, glitter (if wanted) and video cameras so we can catch him and his glorious sweater-vest in action. It would also be nice to show the nation where Idaho really stands on LGBT rights,” reads the page.

The fact that it’s Valentines day is not lost on protest organizers,” What better way to celebrate loving who you love than to throw it in Santorum’s face for an hour?”

Organizers of tonight’s protest in Boise warn that security may be high. “Arrive early so you can get in. You may want to wear a large jacket and roll your signs inside your sleeve around your arm to sneak it in. Conceal everything in a way to not be found,” writes one Facebook commenter.

According to the LA times,” Rick Santorum’s bid for the GOP presidential nomination surged last week after he swept Tuesday’s nominating contests in Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado.”

The gay sex obsessed candidate, “described last week’s court ruling striking down California’s ban on same-sex marriage as “almost absurd” and an example of “judicial tyranny,” reports the Times.

Idaho’s LGBTQIA community is invited to protest the visit.

According to a Facebook event page, Santorum will be making an appearance in the Capitol High School Auditorium, 8055 Goddard Road in Boise on Tuesday night, February 14th from 7:00-8:00 pm.

“Please come to Capitol High School (address above), prepared with signs, glitter (if wanted) and video cameras so we can catch him and his glorious sweater-vest in action. It would also be nice to show the nation where Idaho really stands on LGBT rights,” reads the page.

The fact that it’s Valentines day is not lost on protest organizers,” What better way to celebrate loving who you love than to throw it in Santorum’s face for an hour?”

This morning as I was watching Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton deliver what is sure to go down as one of the top five speeches in LGBTQIA history, I tried to imagine that for 30 minutes the entire world stopped and listened to a call for justice, compassion and understanding.

In my head, Secretary Clinton’s words echoed off the sky, bounced off of tall buildings, churches, mosques and synagogues and fell to the halted traffic below, they bounced off the walls of every classroom as students in small towns and in large cities around the world sat listening. Construction workers stopped building and gathered around their work site radios. The world’s leaders and politicians, left and right, sat in their offices and chambers watching, some with doubt, others with joy, but they watched none the less. The opinions and harsh words and general silliness traded over the internet on a daily basis came to a crawl, every television channel, every radio station, every media outlet beamed those words to every home, every shop and every corner of the globe.

As the final applause rang out in Geneva, the world would once again begin to come back to life, but changed with the thought that,”gay people are born into and belong to every society in the world. They are all ages, all races, all faiths; they are doctors and teachers, farmers and bankers, soldiers and athletes; and whether we know it, or whether we acknowledge it, they are our family, our friends, and our neighbors.”

Some would dismiss it, some would consider it, but all would have heard it, without the filters of talk show hosts and media soundbites, without the misquotes of scare tactic fundraising letters and the summerizations of misguided religious leaders who are neither gay nor transgender, but proclaim to be experts in speaking for a G-D that created both.

Everyone in the world would have heard the same powerful speech, all at the same time.

It didn’t take very long for my day-dream to burst into the ether of just another, “what if.”

Shortly after Secretary Clinton’s speech the press releases and statements started to fly across the wire.

GOP Presidential candidate Rick Perry’s came first, “This administration’s war on traditional American values must stop. I have proposed a foreign aid budget that starts at zero. From that zero baseline, we will consider aid requests based solely on America’s national security interests. Promoting special rights for gays in foreign countries is not in America’s interests and not worth a dime of taxpayers’ money.”

Then Rick Santorum’s,”I would suggest that we give out humanitarian aid based on humanitarian need, not based on whether people are promoting their particular agenda. Obviously the administration is promoting their particular agenda in this country, and now they feel it’s their obligation to promote those values not just in the military, not just in our society, but now around the world with taxpayer dollars.”

As I read their hateful partisan rhetoric I thought of the LGBTQIA teens and adults here in the U.S. wondering if they will ever truly fit in safely, equally, and happily. I thought of the millions of others around the world constantly having to hide who they are for fear of imprisonment or worse. I thought of the individuals living in squalors and ghettos and tent cities on the outskirts of town because they have been rejected by everyone but their own.

And I wondered, “what if?”

What if we all just stopped and took a half an hour and truly watched and listened…what if?

Disclaimer

The opinions expressed in this site, unless otherwise noted, are strictly those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or policies of any other person, organization, group or media outlet.